Help keep cop killers in prison

September 28, 2012

If you go to tribtoday.com and find this story, you will also find an important link. Click on it and you will discover an online petition. Click on that and sign it, please.

The 30-year-old courtroom photograph of Randy Fellows remains chilling today. The look on the then-19-year-old's face sitting in a sideways pose is reminiscent of 20th Century Fox publicity stills of Damien Thorn, the son of the devil character in the horror film ''The Omen.''

No better is the 30-year-old photo of Fred Joseph, staring at the courtroom ceiling appearing unconcerned that at age 17 he murdered a police officer.

The convicts are up for parole. It's unfathomable that the boys who killed Niles police officer John Utlak in 1982, the delinquents who sent an entire city into mourning, the scoundrels who sent an innocent family spiraling into a lifetime of grief, could soon go free.

That shouldn't happen. Utlak's sister, Joanne Robbins, spoke during victim conferences with two Ohio Parole Board members and has launched the online petition that will be considered when Fellows has a hearing Oct. 11 at Trumbull Correctional Institution and Oct. 3 when Joseph has a hearing at Toledo Correctional Institution.

''They left my family devastated,'' Robbins said. ''There was never any remorse. Never any apology. Fellows even tried to claim he was set up later on.''

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The courtroom pictures show two teens just like Robbins described - remorseless, unapologetic, manipulative about the murder they committed.

Not just for Robbins, or Utlak or his family, but for every police officer and every law enforcement family that daily face the possibility of this tragedy, local residents should go online, sign the petition, make a written comment if so moved, and help the Parole Board recognize how wrong it would be for either of these killers to walk out of prison, ever.